Speakers, and where to put them

[sdibbers]

Hi Folks
I have a 1968 SI 2000TC which I'm about to fit a period radio to. The radio is a Becker stereo so I'll need to fit two speakers. I don't want to cut the door cards so was thinking of placing them in pods on the rear parcel shelf, I'm just not crazy about having them there. So my question is where have others put their speakers without them showing up?

 

[Phil Robson]

I purchased some decent 6" speakers & placed them behind the grilles front & rear, with left & right fader being split between them, but front & back being joined together.

Suprisingly, the sound is very good. Of course to get the real effect, you've got to sit sideways(!) but with a bit of fiddling of the balance & base/trebble etc it is quite acceptable. The rear one has a fuller sound because of the boot & this tends to create a better overall sound than you'd expect.

Would I cut out the door cards or mount rear pods? I don't think the sound is that much poorer than the last P6 I had which had cut-outs in the doors so I don't think I would. The speakers are superior this time though.

 

[vaultsman]

I've got the front 2 speakers under the seats with the wiring under the centre console. For the rears I didn't fancy hacking into the parcel shelf...didn't look to promising anyway. So I fitted a pair of surface mounts, which nestle there quite tidily. Blaupunkt head unit plays MP3 from an SD card or a USB memory stick.

OK, they're Pioneer..but discreetly badged!

I'd imagine these are available in the States?

 

[sdibbers]

Hi,

thanks for the replies. I think I follow the route of the surface mount speakers I reckon I can make something that doesn't look too horrendous and fits with my nicely recovered parcel shelf. I think on the S1 the seats don't have a great deal of room below them for speakers and the sound would be a little muffled to boot. The nice thing about Beckers is that you can get a DIN D to 3.5mm jack aux' cable so you can plug in your iPod. I'm looking forward to driving to the Archers podcast in NJ just for the full English effect wile here! That and I really like the way it looks. You can find them occasionally on EBay for around $150- if someone dosen't know what they have. Fitted as standard to Mercedes of the day so the quality is up to rover Standards . Here's a piccy

 

[webmaster]

I managed to fit two (5 inch I think) speakers into the centre console, you can see one in this picture. Yes the stereo was painted to match the car, it was 1992...

 

[ghce]

:shock: :shock: :shock: OMG :shock: :shock: :shock:

Graeme

 

[WarrenL]

Richard, we all hope that you've developed better taste since then.

 

[webmaster]

Richard, we all hope that you've developed better taste since then.

Only marginally !

It was trendy back then in the "Street Machine" days that everything was body colour, so I did the stereo, TC badges etc... I think the badges didn't look bad, the stereo was a "little" overkill though, mind you people were impressed at the time ! I still have it somewhere, any offers ?

 

[quattro]

Richard, we all hope that you've developed better taste since then.

Only marginally !

It was trendy back then in the "Street Machine" days that everything was body colour, so I did the stereo, TC badges etc... I think the badges didn't look bad, the stereo was a "little" overkill though, mind you people were impressed at the time ! I still have it somewhere, any offers ?

I must admit to trying out the 'everything should be body colour' trend with Thunderdog, and painted the wheels monza red, (behind the trims so not much could be seen), and the grey bits of the front grill too.

Both looked appalling :shock:

PS no offers

 

[ghce]

truely awful! its easy to wash my eyes out but that mental after image just wont go away.

Graeme

 

[sdibbers]

My Eyes, my eyes! But I do like your solution of putting the speakers in the side of the console like that. I have 2 4.5" pioneers that would do nicely. I just have to find room for the seperate amp box that the radio has. Maybe under the dash inside the passenger glove box would work?

 

[DaveHerns]

Door speakers were not uncommon in the 70's . A pair of 10 cm speakers with plain grilles looks OK (at least it does to me )

Surprising Rover never put speaker cutouts in the panel below the rear parcel shelf

 

[trickyhicky270]

I have been thinking about putting mine in the front knee bins in the V8, has anyone else tried? I dont really want to cut the door cards as they are mint and replacements arent going to be easy to find if I ever want to put it back to standard. I do on the other had have a pair of spare bins in the right colour.

In the 2000 I have used the front door speakers from a Mk1 Laguna, one in the rear shelf hole ( right size and even the screw holes line up!) and 1 in the centre console speaker hole. Plenty loud enough with a reasonable amount of bass but the stereo effect doesnt really work.

 

[Tor]

My tuppence worth: I bought Blaupunkt GTC component speakers for my car, to work with a recent (2006) Pioneer multiformat/CD player that is fairly subtle and looks plausible. The setup is one 6" woofer each in the unmodified front console aperture and rear parcel shelf aperture, 'bridge' connected (ie. L+ R- front, L- R+ rear) so the fader can be used and power is higher.

Next, tweeters wherever you can discretely place them. Mine are fitted in pods mounted in the A-post trim using existing (upper) screw holes. Not yet as discrete as I'd like it, but I have stereo... The idea is to eventually 'engineer' a way to hide an amped three-way component system for sound quality and power.

The Blaupunkts I got new off ebay, sound lovely at around £45 all told, are very solid and rated at 200W. Frequency splitters not needed. I've not tried yet but I think a smallish amp will fit under the dash above the passenger side knee bin, even next to the fusebox if it's a slim one?

If not concealed, I guess speakers in the lower forward corner of the door skins are an honest mod. The knee bins look best with nothing on them, I think. Recent scrapyard Mercs, Jags, Audis etc. can yield speakers/grilles to match different interiors that tend to be good sound-wise. Some have directional/louvered grilles.

 

[ghce]

My few Yuan worth In audio systems the human ear generally does not note the direction from whence the lower frequencies come from and only the mids and highs are directional, this means you can locate your woofer and or base speaker(s) where you dont need to see them in a place convienient for you and as these are the largest componants it is all well and good. The mid range and tweeters are generaly quite small. Tweeters can be placed at the extreme edges of the dash and because of their dimunitive size are not obtrussive and barely noticed plus can be surface mounted with no effect on performance. Midranges can be cleverly hidden in the front pocket and with directional grilling (both left and right) a very good directional sense may be imparted to the audio.
Rears can be mounted in the rear parcel shelf (not in NZ as that is now illegal with out engineering certification) or just put the best quality box speakers you can find ie alloy boxes and proper 3 way crossovers.

Graeme

 

[KiwiRover]

My red TC has a modern headunit with a matching pair of 6.5" speakers in the 1 front 1 rear position, wired up in 'sideways stereo' and it sounds just fine to me, although I am not an audiophile. But I really didn't want to cut any holes in this one. I have seen speakers fitted in the glove boxes but you wind up with a moderately reduced glovebox and issues with any metal objects in there. On my last V8, I fitted the 6" speakers in the front doors in the usual place but removed the door trim, fitted the speaker to the door, then cut out a 6" hole in the back of the door trim board and foam then punched a grid of holes through the vinyl, just like the rear parcel shelf. It looked fairly original to the uninitiated.

 

[The Rovering Member]

I still have it somewhere, any offers ?

I offer to drop it in the nearest available bin.

This is Bruiser's cheap 'n' cheerful set-up. Bought these at the Enfield Pageant for a fiver some years back.

I was going to use them in our P4 but they were there when I fitted this stereo so Bruiser got them & I don't think they look half bad actually & they sound pretty good. They're Austin-Rover but I have no idea what they originally came out of. They've got fitted bolts so fix through the shelf. I'll probably put front speakers in the centre consol too as others have done.

This was given to me a few weeks ago & works well. I may fit a CD in the boot as it has provision for one.

Remove the front panel & surround:

And I can do this.

Which I'm very happy about as it keeps that spartan S1 look.

 

[hermione149]

I have a 4 speaker arrangement,... two in the doors,...



and two on the rear shelf,.....

 

[webmaster]

My few Yuan worth In audio systems the human ear generally does not note the direction from whence the lower frequencies come from and only the mids and highs are directional, this means you can locate your woofer and or base speaker(s) where you dont need to see them in a place convienient for you and as these are the largest componants it is all well and good. The mid range and tweeters are generaly quite small. Tweeters can be placed at the extreme edges of the dash and because of their dimunitive size are not obtrussive and barely noticed plus can be surface mounted with no effect on performance. Midranges can be cleverly hidden in the front pocket and with directional grilling (both left and right) a very good directional sense may be imparted to the audio.
Rears can be mounted in the rear parcel shelf (not in NZ as that is now illegal with out engineering certification) or just put the best quality box speakers you can find ie alloy boxes and proper 3 way crossovers.

Graeme

I can concur with Graeme's suggestions. I once installed a fairly excessive but discrete setup into a Midget, using 2 x 10" bass units and 2 x 8" three way units fitted to a panel in the space behind the seats, driven by a 600W amp welded to the panel above the passengers legs, this was ok and definately had plenty of bass !, but the whole thing really came together when I added two small tweaters fitted through small holes cut into the dash, they were hardly noticeable but made the world of diference. At the time it was one of the nicest sounding car installs I had heard and very powerfull, and no it wasn't all "drum 'n bass" the guy was into classical music, but it needed to drown out the rattly old 1500.

 

[alfesti]

To avoid cutting into any panels and to try for reasonable sound, I put a pair of the smallest Alpine 2-way speakers I could find behind the speaker grill in the front centre console. I cut a sheet of thick MDF to fit inside and hold them tight. It sounds pretty good and you'd never know they were there visually.